The Rules of 221B
by elphabathedelirious32
Summary: Little series of drabbles/oneshots for the vignettes of Sherlock and John that have a tendency to pop into my head...Chapter 1: Fight Club. Only fictional animals were harmed in the making of this story. Canon, so no overt slash or anything.
1. Chapter 1

**A/N: I know I should be working on the next chapter of my kid!Sherlock story, but, as a celebration of the end of finals, my friends and I watched **_**Fight Club**_**, which I'd never seen. I did figure it out the moment Tyler walked onto the screen, causing my friend Lydia, who had never seen it either, great consternation as to what I could possibly know and how I could possibly know it... and thus a plot bunny was born…and I've finally decided to post it. I'll probably make a little drabble series for things like this that pop into my head. **

"John, all I asked you to do was hit me, and I really don't understand-"

John stopped laughing long enough to say, "The first rule of fight club is never talk about fight club? Really, Sherlock, you've never heard that before?"

"I have no idea what you're going on about—I need you to hit me for an experiment. Here." Sherlock pointed at his cheekbone. "I need to monitor the progression of bruising-"

"Sherlock, I'm not going to hit you in the face."

"Come on, please. John. I'll get the milk if you do it."

John sighed. His flatmate looked like a sulking fourteen-year-old. He weighed the absurdity of punching Sherlock in the face and letting him walk around London looking like a…God, John didn't even know. Sherlock _could _bloody well act like bloody Tyler Durden sometimes, and even though John didn't buy the sociopath he certainly bought the boredom.

"No," John said finally, "I'll hit you, if it'll make you happy, but don't get the milk, I've already done the shop and we've got milk, tea, orange juice- besides, you'll probably get the wrong kind and slip something into it or blow it up somehow on the way back to the flat, or throw it at a murderer's head or something—no. I'll hit you if you'll watch a film with me after."

"No need to go to all that trouble to ask for a date, John," said Sherlock, smirking to hide the fact that he was internally grinning like a child at getting his own way.

"Shut up," said John.

"No, really, I can tell you fancy me, and it's a bit bloody pathetic to be honest-"

John punched Sherlock in the face. Hard.

Sherlock grinned even wider, holding his cheek. "Thank you." He pulled a digital camera out of his pocket and went over to the mirror to take some photos of the spot where John's fist had connected with his face.

"I'll get the milk and the DVD, then," said John, leaving his flatmate to whatever it was he was doing.

That evening, John pulled Sherlock out of the kitchen with the promise to help him photograph his developing bruise every hour "until reasonable human beings are in bed, mind," and sat him down on the sofa.

Sherlock fidgeted through the beginning of the film, once asking John,

"Is he ever going to stop whinging and do something?"

"Ssh. Yes. Wait."

"Fine." Sherlock probed his bruise with his fingers.

"Stop playing with it."

"No."

"You'll sod up the results."

Sherlock's hand went down to the sofa with remarkable speed.

"Watch this, now, it's important," said John as Edward Norton's character sat down on what appeared to Sherlock to be just another of his ridiculous aeroplane trips.

Then another man was sitting next to him. John leaned back and grinned, sure that Tyler would hold Sherlock's attention.

"He's not real, is he?" Sherlock asked instantly. "He's a hallucination."

"_What_?" John blurted. "How can you _possibly _know that?"

"Easy. When he sat down, the window seat was empty. Then the other one appeared when he looked up. Since this is a film, it could be some kind of magical realism, but this seems realistic so far, _and _he's been going on and on about his insomnia and how it blurs the lines of reality, so, inference, hallucination due to lack of sleep and to help him deal with his empty, boring life."

John sat and sputtered for a moment.

"So, am I right?" Sherlock asked. "I'll sit and watch anyway if I am."

"Yes," John growled, "you are."

"Are you not meant to realize that?"

"No, not really, at all, no."

"Mmhm, it's a twist. I should tell you, no one watches films with me, I'm apparently rubbish, especially at ones with twists."

"Sherlock, no one watches films with you because you haven't any friends."

"Actually, no, Mycroft watches films with me, or would…"

John gave up in disgust and sat back to watch the movie, trying not to imagine the horror of Sherlock and Mycroft watching a film together.

"You loathe your brother," said John, trying to rid himself of the terrifying idea of the Holmes brothers seated in front of a television, competing to figure out every last detail of the film within the first ten minutes.

"Yes, which is why the only time we interact with any kind of remote civility is when we're competing."

John had a thought. "I suppose the two of you dreamed up grand pretend games as children, didn't you? Tyrants and thieves and knights and all that?"

"Mm, no knights. Spies. Murderers. We'd set each other puzzles, too. Once I broke into his room and stole all the essays he'd written for university over Christmas—left him codes to find codes to find codes to find a clue to where I'd hidden them…"

"What'd he do to you?" John was slightly afraid to hear the answer.

Sherlock grinned. "Actually, he was delighted at the time. Years later he took to hiding my…" he trailed off, glancing at John's face. "Never mind."

"What? Sherlock?"

"Nothing."

"Sherlock, are there drugs in this flat?"

"Yes. Acetominophen, aspirin, nicotine, caffeine-"

"You're a prick."

"I'm precise."

"Pedant."

"Shut up, John, you're interrupting the film, and they're talking about explosives. Is his other personality a bomber? That's brilliant."

"No, Sherlock, it's not."

"You can actually do that, you know, you take three parts gasoline-"

"I don't want to know, and I don't want to move into an abandoned shack in the middle of nowhere and watch you start a terrorist organization so please, please, for the love of anything sane, do not blow up the flat."

Sherlock crossed his arms and drew his knees up to his chest, assuming the defiant pout of a thwarted toddler. "Fine."

John settled back to watch the film, content for a few moments.

Then he noticed that Sherlock had his phone out.

"Sherlock, who are you texting?"

"Whom."

"Sod off. Who?"

"Mycroft."

"Why?"

"I think it might be nice if I stopped off and visited his house while he's in Geneva and I don't want him to be able to track-"

"Sherlock, NO."

...

The next morning, John was surprised to find the flat quiet when he awoke, with no evidence of nocturnal violin playing or dangerous experiments with alkaloids in the Marmite. He glanced again into the living room, and was shocked to find his flatmate curled in a chair, giving every appearance of being asleep. All was peaceful until John opened the freezer, hoping to thaw a bit of orange juice to have with his toast.

No, there was no severed head in the freezer.

There was also no orange juice. John ran a hand through his cropped hair. He knew he had bought it- a whole litre of frozen concentrate, since Sarah had mentioned wanting to try a smoothie recipe or something she'd seen on telly and he thought he'd be the domestic hero and have a bit on hand (also hoping, of course, that she'd be hanging about the flat to ask).

_Did you know if you mix equal parts gasoline and frozen orange juice concentrate, you can make napalm? _

John glanced at the freezer. Back at the sleeping Sherlock. Back at the freezer. Was that a nip of gasoline he smelled?

"SHERLOCK!"

Fin.


	2. Chapter 2

**A/N: Just a few random vignettes I imagine taking place in 221B. I'm working a more substantial bit for this that ties in with my other poor abandoned story. And on that too. Really I promise I am...**

"John?"

"What?"

"The light on my magnifying glass has gone out."

"So?"

"How do I fix it?"

A sigh. "You need new batteries, I imagine."

"Yes, I know."

"So?"

"So…can you change them?"

….

"Sherlock, what the HELL are you playing on the violin?"

"I believe it is called 'The Final Countdown.'"

"But…why?"

"Mrs. Hudson took away my skull!"

John does not see the connection. "So…we all have to suffer?"

"_Yes_."

…

"Sherlock?"

"Yes?"

"Can you come here for a moment?"

Sherlock appears in the kitchen doorway, a doubtful look gracing his countenance.

"I'm rubbish at cooking, John."

"You're a chemist, it can't be that different."

"Nothing explodes when you cook."

"Right. Well, can you just hold this chicken for a tick? I need to get the Styrofoam off this end."

"Why? It'll peel off in the water when it defrosts."

"Yes, but the Styrofoam makes it float, so it won't thaw properly on this end."

Sherlock grabs a chef's knife from the counter and stabs the end of the chicken breast attached to the offending Styrofoam. It obediently sinks below the surface of the water.

"Sherlock, _what_?"

"It'll thaw evenly now," the detective says, smirking a little and beginning to retreat from the kitchen.

"Er, thanks, I suppose."

"Not a problem. Oh, and John?"

"Yeah?"

"That's not chicken."


	3. Exogenous Agonist

"And you care?"

"No, but I'm trying."

He was, and it was harder than one might think. He had tried in secondary school to fit in, briefly, and he _could _do it. His second roommate at uni told him, once, "Do you watch Doctor Who, ever? You know when a place is a second out of time, so he's always complaining that everything just feels off? That's you, sometimes. When you laugh, it's weird—it's too loud, it's something…off."

And it did—false laughter had made him feel giddy and unserious and not himself (but himself was creepy and quiet and just stared for hours on end sometimes) so he stopped, and let the world crash down around his ears.

It _hurt._ Thinking hurt. Thinking always about everything, never just being, always analyzing, cutting, planning, _hurt_. Hurt so much the thought of became something acceptable. And when it was offered, grains like sugar doubly gleaming, he took it.

Cocaine made the world breathable. You wouldn't think, since it was a stimulant, but _yesohgodyes _it did. It made him focus, let him focus on things that wouldn't hold him for a second sober. It let him laugh, really and truly. The mask fell and what was behind no longer terrified but could even pass for human on a good day. He could be like Mycroft, he could be the dizzy center, people surrounding him, laughing with him, he could charm them with a glance or a thought. It was so easy to believe it was real, his castle on a cloud, castle in the air, in this kilometre-high world he made of his beautiful brain and the miniscule diamond droplets of cocaine, slipping and singing into his veins.

He wasn't an addict, though. Maybe Mycroft thought so, but Mycroft was _dull_, and could turn himself on and off to the outside world, and without his diamonds Sherlock couldn't. C17H21NO4, his great friend, only friend, who opened the world to him. Until it didn't; until he felt his brain dulling. He stopped the second he knew it and however great the ache for his syringes he left them alone for one month, two, until he felt it was safe again, once in a while, when he was so very bored he was near to testing blood coagulation at various vessels on himself.

(in the back of his mind he knew this was an addict's behavior, knew what he was doing, but he was too smart for that, wasn't he? Above all that. The great Sherlock Holmes. Even if he was an addict, he wasn't in an alley, he was graduating with honors, so it was all right, wasn't it?)

He only needed it when he didn't have the natural thing, the adrenaline. He knew what it did, how it worked; he was a chemist, he'd done a course on neurotoxins, he knew his way around the brain generally and his brain especially. He knew his breaking point.

He had already broken, and this wasn't breaking. This was holding together, just about to explode.


End file.
